


Solstice

by blackmare, Nightdog_Barks



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst and Humor, Christmas Eve, Gen, Magic, Magic-Users, Sorcerers, Spirits, Winter Solstice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 17:36:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9082597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackmare/pseuds/blackmare, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightdog_Barks/pseuds/Nightdog_Barks
Summary: When Wilson mysteriously disappears, House has the perfect plan to find him ... if he can just make it work.





	

**Title:** _Solstice_  
**Authors:** and .  
**Characters:** Wilson, House, Cuddy, Hadley (Thirteen), Taub, Foreman, a variety of OCs  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Warnings:** No  
**Spoilers:** None  
**Summary:** When Wilson mysteriously disappears, House has the perfect plan to find him ... if he can just make it work.  
**Author Notes:** This is set in the same ficverse as [_Take the Long Way Home_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/186433), in which House is a Doctor of Divination and things are just a _little_ bit different. The Part One/Part Two epigraphs are from Shakespeare. Posted on Dreamwidth and Livejournal Christmas Eve, 2016.  
**Intrepid Readers:** Pwcorgigirl 

_'Tis true: there's magic in the web of it ..._

 

**_Solstice_ **

 

At precisely 9:26 in the morning, on a bright December day already promising to be unseasonably warm, James Wilson disappears. The only person to see him go is Mrs. Tilda Swapnut, whom he's advising to eat more fiber when he vanishes from behind his desk in a roiling puff of blue smoke.

"Doctor?" Mrs. Swapnut says. "Dr. Wilson?" She sits still for a moment, nervously eying the empty office chair. 

Mrs. Swapnut has actually seen this sort of thing happen before, years ago at a county fair her husband, the late Mr. Swapnut, had dragged her to. They'd watched as a magician had changed water to fizzy soda pop, conjured bouquets of flowers from teapots, and pulled a reluctant rabbit from a hat. As his final act, the sorcerer had waved his arms, chanted an incantation in what he claimed was the ancient language of Mesopotamian kings, thrown his cloak about himself, and disappeared in a sudden burst of violet-hued vapors. The audience had applauded, and then sat wondering, but the magician hadn't reappeared. They'd found out later the trickster had used the occasion to run off to Andover, Maryland, with his girlfriend. Mrs. Swapnut doesn't _think_ Dr. Wilson has run off with anyone, but she waits a bit longer just to make sure.

* * *

"Beans," Wilson says, "whole grains, and even popcorn can -- " but then he looks up and stops listing fiber-rich foods because the patient's chair in his office is empty. 

Wilson blinks. 

"Mrs. Swapnut?" he says.

The chair stays resolutely empty.

"Mrs. -- " Wilson stops again. Oh.

"House," he says. "Okay, House. You got me."

Silence.

"House, Mrs. Swapnut isn't a rabbit. Bring her back, please."

Out of the corner of Wilson's eye, something moves. He turns his head, slowly, and blinks again.

His office is melting into a shower of blue sparks, bubbling up at the ceiling corners and trickling down the walls.

"House?" he says, but it's more of a whisper this time.

 _Vortex_ , some small part of his brain informs him. _Some kind of vor--_ But before his brain can complete the thought, his office is gone, and him along with it.

* * *

"And that's when he disappeared," the patient says again.

Charlie Pereira sighs. "Okay, Mrs. Swapnut," she says. "Let's go over it one more time."

"But I've told you three times already!"

"Yes, ma'am, I know. But I need to hear it again." _And it's not going to make any more sense the fourth time, or the fifth, or however many times I hear it_ , Charlie thinks. She waves over a fellow security officer. "Rose, get the Magister on the phone," she says. "Let's kick this upstairs." She turns back to the patient, but the patient, instead of telling her wackdoodle story for the fourth time, is looking over Charlie's shoulder, pointing a wavering finger down the hallway.

"There he is!" she cries. Charlie looks.

It's the strangest sight she's ever seen -- Charlie recognizes him right away, Dr. Wilson being one of the few doctors here who greets her by name -- Dr. Wilson standing not more than six feet away, consumed in a bright blue flame. Except ... he isn't burning, none of him. He's just standing there, looking as puzzled as Charlie imagined she looks right at this moment. The doc's mouth is open, like he's trying to say something, but no sound comes out. Everything's wavery, rippling in the blue fire like heat mirages coming off a concrete sidewalk. 

"Holy tap-dancing Christ," Charlie whispers, and then, more loudly, "Doc?"

Dr. Wilson says something -- Charlie can see it, but the doc's features are too distorted by the ripple-effect for her to lip-read. Charlie feels the hair on her arms lifting, an all-too-familiar sensation in this bughouse of a hospital. Unbidden, a line from a poem she'd read as a kid, one that had always scared her, made her look under her bed every damn time, leaps to mind --

 _For the Snark_ was _a Boojum, you see ..._

She thrusts the memory away; she needs to keep a clear head, and besides, this couldn't be any worse than the time the jokers in the Divination Department unleashed a whole pack of djinns in the Peds regeneration lab.

Could it?

"Doc," Charlie says again. "Say something! Tell us -- "

But it's too late. The blue fire winks out, and Dr. Wilson goes with it. In the sudden silence that follows, Charlie becomes aware that someone close by is softly repeating _"Oh my god oh my god oh my god"_ over and over again. She hopes it isn't Rosie.

"There!" Mrs. Swapnut says triumphantly. "Now do you believe me?"

* * *

_ In the vortex _

He tumbles through the floor (the wall? the ceiling? he can't tell) of the brightly lit hospital, falling into nothingness and terror, until abruptly there is _something_ again. 

He lands with a graceless thump, tumbling into tall, damp grass, in some dark field somewhere. Wherever this is, the ground is soft and wet and the stars are out. So many stars, huge stars in unfamiliar patterns, hanging low like the ceiling of a house built too small. 

Wilson sits on his ass, blinking upward through the fading glow of the plasma field around him. Just as he starts to feel the chill of the night air, something moves -- and that's when he sees _it_ , and _it_ sees _him_. Slowly, as quietly as he can, Wilson gets up. 

The creature is huge, shaped like four heavy chaise lounges stacked upon each other, with all the wide ends facing front. The wind shifts, bringing its musk to Wilson's nose as it approaches. In the light of the too-low stars, he can make out the swaying of long, matted hair.

 _Don't run_ , he thinks. _It won't like it if you run. Back away slowly. Back away slowly. Don't --_

It surges forward, the soft ground shakes, and its four eyes glint in its massive skull. Starlight outlines something pale and curving at the side of its mouth. 

_Tusks_ , says Wilson's brain, and he notes there's a forest nearby.

Wilson runs.

* * *

He's barely ahead of the thing, halfway to the woods and no chance of making it, when he damn near runs into the single, slender tree. In a blind, animal panic, he scrambles up the trunk. The low branches are spindly, barren, but they hold. 

It's not until he's out of the beast's reach that he looks down, past his feet which are now bare, the mud having taken his shoes and his socks.

There are _three_ of the things gathered, snuffling his scent on the trunk. A low, bone-vibrating bellow rings through the air, through his skin and hair and lungs. The beasts are moving, and so is the tree. 

He's dead. He knows he's dead the moment he feels the _crack!_. The ghosts of his entire life rush past him on his way to the ground. His arms stretch out to break his fall, the starlight winks out, and the world bursts into blinding brightness.

When his vision clears, he's lying curled on a white floor in a familiar white hallway, with all the lines bent and blurred like it's the bottom of a pool, and then the watery-looking feet in their rippling pants and shoes are gathering around him.

He scrambles to his feet, squinting while his eyes adjust to the brightness, asking questions and not getting any answers. Whatever these people are saying, Wilson can't hear.

* * *

Wilson's been gone three hours and already House's coffee is cold. The red mug Wilson gave him appears not to work unless Wilson is around; it sits on his desk, losing its cheerful glow along with its warmth.

The universe is shifting out of balance. Chase is avoiding him, Foreman's pretending to care about the most boring patient in history (and thus doing bedside stuff, and avoiding him), and Taub is ... fine, she's behaving pretty much like Taub, placidly studying him when she thinks he's not looking. He can see her reflection in the glass-walled Divination office.

He leans back in his chair and, knowing Taub will be counting, takes two pills from the bottle and makes it look like four. He washes them down with the coffee that shouldn't be cold, to relieve the leg that shouldn't be hurting like this. Usually, at this time of day, he needs no meds yet. Usually, he doesn't find himself wishing for his _cane_. His cane, which he hasn't required for ... what? Five years now.

Damn Wilson. Damn him, getting lost.

Damn him, getting lost and taking his distaff powers with him.

House picks up his phone and dictates a page, speaking loudly over the stereo. "All serfs are hereby commanded to return to His Lordship at once. Fail and be thrown in the dungeon." He's genuinely surprised when Hadley appears -- it hadn't been a real summons, after all -- but when she speaks he snaps to attention.

"House," she says. "He's back."

* * *

The spectral aura flickers at the edges, a cold fire without heat that produces neither smoke nor flame. _Wilson_ , House thinks, _has become the Blue Light Special._

"Wow," says Foreman. Everyone else in the crowded hallway stands mute, gawping.

House ignores him. "Wilson!" he shouts. "Hey, Wilson!"

Wilson looks at him -- or at least, he _seems_ to be looking at him, his face wavering, his mouth opening and closing silently. It reminds House of a guppy he'd had as a kid, and he shoves away the memory of finding the fish belly-up one morning and its subsequent flush down the toilet after his father had refused to let him do a necropsy.

"Wilson!" he yells again, and this time he can tell, Wilson does see him.

"You're caught in a Quaice vortex," House calls out. "A small one, so it's _really_ unstable!"

Wilson's eyes widen. The aura hisses and sputters, throwing off tiny Roman candles of trailing sparks.

"I don't think that's what he wanted to hear," Taub mutters.

"His feet!" Hadley says. "Look at his feet!"

House looks, then blinks. Wilson is barefoot, and his feet are smeared and caked with black mud, his pants legs spattered with it. House's fingers tighten around his cane. Where is Wilson _traveling_ , that he would lose his shoes?

"What the hell," Taub says. House drags his attention away from Wilson's bare feet.

"Wilson!" he shouts. "We'll get you back! We'll -- "

But with the effervescent _pop!_ of a giant soap bubble, the vortex is gone, and with it, Wilson.

Where he'd been, there are a few small clots of mud on the tile, and a few faint dirty footprints, one of them with a repeated red crescent at the heel -- because Wilson is bleeding. Wherever he is.

The hospital corridor stands empty.

* * *

"And you think that's going to do it," Taub says. She sounds skeptical, but then she always sounds skeptical. "Tackling Wilson the next time he appears."

"Piece of cake," House says.

"Uh huh." Taub narrows her eyes. "Well ... what if it does work, and frees Wilson, but traps _you_ there instead?"

"Yeah," Hadley says. "What if?"

House sighs. "Well, _duh_ ," he says. "You think I'd do this without a dry run?" He looks around. "Foreman. You go first."

"No," Foreman says. House glares at him, but Foreman simply stares back.

"You're right," House admits. "Too much mass; you'd just bounce the whole envelope into some other plane. Taub, you try it."

Taub shakes her head. "Not _enough_ mass," she says. "I'd get caught in there with him and you know it."

"Fine, Goldilocks," House snipes. He looks around. "Where's Chase? He'd be juuuust right."

"It's his day off," Hadley informs him. "And I'm not calling him in." She straightens her back as if she's reached a decision. "Besides," she says, "none of this is going to matter if we can't summon him back in the first place."

"We?" House says. "Summon?" But he's talking to nobody, because apparently his team has gone on without him.

And that's exactly what they should have done, because he's an idiot. Conjuring across vortex boundaries is unpredictable and a massive pain in the ass, but he knows better than to physically wrangle a vortex. He'll need a summons and an anchor to keep Wilson here until the Quaice energy runs out, and he'd have had that idea first if only he weren't so damn distracted.

* * *

_ In the vortex, part two _

The hospital vanishes, Hadley and House and all: lights out. He tries to cry out, _not again_ , but there is no air in the void. He'll die here or he'll die when he gets back there, when the things with the tusks --

\-- but the next light he sees is a lamp, not stars. Stripes of daylight, through a set of window blinds. Wilson crumples downward in a shower of blue sparks, onto a nice tan berber carpet. There are probably no beasts here, in this ... office.

Before he can pick himself up, the door swings slowly, quietly open. Gregory House takes one furtive step inside, and then startles and jumps so hard that he knocks a hapless diffenbachia right into the bookcase. A white-coated cubby bear tumbles from a shelf. Its tiny name tag reads _Dr. Wilson_ , and that's wrong because he's never seen it before in his life, and what else is wrong is that House looks so _tired_ , the lines on his face too deep and his skin too pale, his hair too gray. And House is looking at him like Wilson is some bizarre new species of sea weasel.

Never mind all that; this is _still House_.

"House," Wilson says, "you have to help me!" 

But he's not really sure House can hear him.

* * *

After another meeting, the augury of a goat's horn, and the casting of a sack of beans, House believes they've got it figured out.

The Summoning Room is the single oldest thing on the hospital grounds -- an aerie, perched on top of a tower that everyone calls the Silo, accessible from the main building only by a narrow, enclosed catwalk. The walls of the lofty little room are cedar, with panels of carved rock salt. On the stone floor, a circle of rock salt surrounds the inlaid drawing slab with its contrasting pattern of black and white squares; the only natural light, a nebulous beam from the dome of crystal above. The four coves in the corners do nothing to dispel the gloom. From Hadley's expression, House guesses it's her first time in this place.

"Precautions," he says, indicating the panels of salt. 

"You don't think it was excessive? What the hell were these people conjuring? Giant slugs?"

House affects a careless shrug. "It's not the amount of slime on the slug," he intones, "it's the size of the slug in the slime."

Hadley stares at him. "I'm ... not even going to ask what that means."

"Good," House says, "because there's no time to waste." He taps his cane against the loaded cart they've brought in. "Put the warrants in the corner coves."

By the time she finishes -- the fishbowl with its circling goldfish in the south, the oil lamp in the east, the little green Yule tree in its clay pot in the west -- a few lanternflies, disturbed by the commotion, have risen from the tree's branches to flit, blinking, around her hair. House decides not to tell her.

"And nothing in that corner," Hadley says. She sounds doubtful.

"That's the north wind," House says. " _Everything_ is in that corner."

* * *

Despite their preparations, the first conjuration isn't what House was expecting.

Wilson appears, all right. He's dressed in dark trousers and boots, a cloak the color of rain-washed slate draped across his shoulders. He stares at House, jaw agape, before he begins scrabbling at the sheath on his belt.

" _Duivels!_ " he spits. " _Duivels! Ga weg!_ " The knife in the sheath comes free, and he brandishes it uncomfortably close to House's nose. " _Smerig magie! GA WEG!_ "

"Go away, yourself," House mutters, dismissing this not-Wilson with a wave of his hand.

"What ... who was that?" Hadley breathes.

"If I had to guess, I'd say James Wilson from a place where Nieuw Amsterdam still exists."

"You mean ... we could see Wilsons from alternate worlds? _Parallel universes?_ "

"Pretty sure we just did," House admits. "That one sure wasn't ours."

He removes half a stalk of cinder-grass from the arrangement of items on the drawing slab, adds two more grains of Dead Sea salt, and begins again. His assessment proves correct, and for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, he and Hadley play host to a long parade of wrong Wilsons.

There's a Wilson in white tie and tails -- literally, _tails_ , as House peers closer to spot a pair of long, waving appendages emerging from beneath the tuxedo jacket.

A Wilson dressed in a policeman's blue uniform pauses in the act of lifting a shiny steel whistle to his lips to gape at House. "What the hell, buddy?" he says. "Get outta the fuckin' road!"

The next Wilson is close, so close -- the familiar lab coat, the tailored suit pants, the i.d. badge clipped to --

"Not ours," House mutters, and sends him away.

"No," Hadley insists. "It was him! It was Wilson! Bring him back, House!"

"Pocket protector on the wrong side," House says, and Hadley drops back, shaking her head.

"Oh," she says, faintly. "Oh."

They go on, Wilson after Wilson, some with earrings, some with wedding rings, some with beards, some with mustaches, some with hair so long it's pulled into a ponytail, a bun, braids. A few are bald, scalps smooth as eggshells; another's snap-brim fedora rides atop a luxuriant mane. Some stare at him and Hadley with wide, astonished eyes; some curse, some turn their backs. One Wilson looks comically surprised and annoyed to be caught smoking a cigarette. A couple look sick, and one claps a hand to his mouth as if he's about to puke. House gets rid of him immediately. Yet another is impeccable in a three-piece pinstripe; he glances impatiently at a thin gold watch on his wrist before inquiring sharply, " _Schto'ta? K'to vwe?_ "

"Obviously no one you know, _Boris_ ," House mutters.

The next Wilson holds a cane and has some kind of large bird -- an owl, House realizes -- perched on a thick leather pad strapped to his shoulder, chattering, its feathers raised and broad head bobbing in agitation. Wilson says something to it, soft and soothing, and looks around, yet seems to focus on nothing, calling out names House doesn't recognize and beginning to tap the floor with that stick.

House sends him back without a word, just as the owl stretches its wings to fly ahead of its sightless master.

"House," Hadley whispers.

"What?"

It's a moment before she answers, but then she says, "Nothing."

"What?" House says again, because it's obviously _something_.

"Nothing," Hadley says, more firmly this time. "It's just ... it's a little weird. To see."

"It's first-year required studies," House says. "Transmigration of Souls 101."

"I know the _theory_ , House," she snaps. "It's a little different seeing it in real life."

That's the last of the Wilsons he summons. It's gone dark outside. There are infinite worlds and infinite Wilsons, and if some of them hurt to look at, House will never, ever say so. 

"I'm going home," House says.

* * *

The apartment is quiet -- if he were watching one of Wilson's beloved _film noir_ movies, he'd say it was _too_ quiet and look for the guy with the gun hiding behind the drapes. Instead it's just Wilson's stupid cat, Sadie, winding herself around his legs and mewing plaintively. _Now_ , says the cat, in that too-easily-understood tone. _Nooooowwww_. And in fairness, it's well past nine; the cat has a right to be hungry just as House has a right to a drink.

* * *

House is on drink number one o'clock, two guitars on the floor behind the bench where he sits, trying the piano for a change. All he seems able to remember is a few stanzas of bar ditties, something about a girl and a sword and a sharp, wounded heart.

And since it's all he knows right now, House plays it, and plays it again, and keeps playing right up until the blue light floods across the polished piano-top, and spills sparks across his fingers on the keys, and House looks up at a pair of bare, bruised, familiar feet.

Wilson's coat and tie are gone now, too, and rather than gazing down at House, he slumps his shoulders and bends his knees and crouches closer, reaching out as if to touch the piano keys. House's hair stands on end, drawn by the pseudoelectrons of the vortex, and just as his brain catches up to what's happening, to the idea that there might be something he could do --

 _*pfff*_ goes the vortex, like a soft exhalation of breath, and there's nothing left on the piano but a thin blanket of violet haze and a very confused cat.

"Fuck," House says, and the curse sweeps the last of the vapor off the wood, leaving him staring at his own reflection. "You, my friend, are an idiot."

He's still sitting there wondering whether to get sober or get drunker -- since he clearly won't get any sleep -- when the phone rings. The caller I.D. reads _13_. 

"House," she says. "I'm in the Library. I've found something."

 

**_Part Two_ **

_If this be magic, let it be an art ..._

 

She's not just in the Library, she's in the oldest section of the Library, the chapter everyone calls the Upper Fifth for reasons long since forgotten.

It takes him a while to track her down; cell service is sporadic at best in this area, and with the added weight of the free-floating Secrets of the Library, his phone's no use. In the end he has to set a Minor Seeking spell. Somehow he's not surprised when it leads to the oldest stacks, rows of silent shelves lined with dark, dusty volumes, where he rounds a corner to find her with an open book on a lectern. A few shadows hover nearby.

"House," she says by way of greeting. "What _are_ these things? They keep trying to talk to me."

House glares at the shadows, but without effect.

"They're Secrets," he says. "Accretions. Bits of loose aether from everyone who's passed through here. Spiritual dandruff." A chorus of whispers, the sound of dry leaves rustling in the wind, rises from the shadows. "Stupid and annoying, but harmless. What have you got?"

"It's in the Runcible Diagrams." She lowers her head, her hair brushes against the pages; it gives off a faint scent of roses and cloves. "See? Here, in this chapter with the Seventh Revenant."

The Upper Fifth is dark except for the one desk light. A faint hint of ozone hangs in the air. House hasn't been in here in years. Something bides close, a shadow, tries to whisper in his ear. It sounds like _Tommy loved me, but I didn't love him back_ , just at the edge of his hearing. He ignores it.

"The Seventh Revenant is a kid's story," House says. "A copy of a copy, ten times over." He feels himself sag, deflating; he'd actually thought she had the answer. The shadow tries his other ear, murmuring, _I cheated on my physics exam_ ; House swats it away like a mosquito.

Hadley looks at him, lips pursed. She lifts a hand, tucks a stray strand of hair behind an ear. "No," she says. "Not here. Not a kid's story." She taps at an illustration -- an alchemical formula, graced with what appears to be a dragon emerging from a sun.

"This Saturday," she says. "Saturday, at midnight."

"That's Christmas Eve," House says. "Candles and trees. Mistletoe. _Jul. Sol Invictus_ , the whole nine yards with saviors out of hats. No one will be here."

Hadley smiles at him. "That's how it works," she says.

* * *

"No," Cuddy says. "Absolutely, positively no."

"Great," House says. "We'll get started right away."

Cuddy doesn't look up from the memo she's reading. "I _said_ no." 

"So there's room to negotiate."

Now Cuddy _does_ look up. " _No_ ," she says, this time more forcefully. Next to House, Hadley shifts in her seat. Cuddy pins her with a steely glare, then turns her attention back to House.

"I realize you're trying to get Wilson back," she says. "But you're seriously planning to breach a vortex on the night of turn-tide?" She picks up a pen and writes her name at the bottom of the memo in quick, efficient strokes. "You have no idea what'll spill out of that piñata. It's lunacy."

"Oh, it's not -- "

"It's Christmas Eve," Cuddy snaps. "A _turn-tide_ night. You of all people should know better." She sets the memo aside and takes up more papers. "I'm starting to wonder why I made you head of the Divination Department to begin with."

"I'm just that sexy?"

Cuddy ignores him. "No one with half a brain conjures on a turn-tide. _No one_. You could invoke a mermaid and you'd get a walrus. Command a coffee cup and you'd get a golem. Charge up a dromedary and get a golden retriever." 

At these words, her familiar pricks up his ears.

"Not you, Bass," Cuddy says, and the big dog thumps his tail against the floor and goes back to his nap.

"You know damn well," Cuddy continues, "that I can't put the hospital in that kind of danger. They're _still_ rebuilding Port Manatee, and that was, what? Eight years ago? Ten?"

"You're seriously comparing this to the Sarasota City Incident? They were trying to dispose of a body. The only thing that really went wrong was that the firedrake they _'whoopsie'_ conjured let one of them live."

"That," Hadley adds, "and they didn't have the direct descendant of an Arch Mage to protect them." 

"Well, neither do ... " Cuddy begins, then stops. "Wait," she says, narrowing her eyes. "Are you saying ... "

"I'm the great-granddaughter of the Newton Corner Arch Mage. Power runs matrilineally in that branch, so ... " She waves one hand, as if waiting for everyone else to catch up.

"You never mentioned this on your 280-M Disclosure Form," Cuddy says. "I'm pretty sure I'd remember something like that."

Hadley shrugs. "It didn't seem relevant," she says.

" _Okay!_ " House says. " _Now_ we're ready."

* * *

A discreet knock at the door, and it opens just enough to reveal one of the hospital's security officers.

"Sorry, Magister," she says, "but you wanted to be notified when ... he's been spotted in the cafeteria."

Cuddy sighs. "Thank you, Officer Pereira."

"Wait! He's been spotted," House says, "meaning he's no longer there?"

"Sorry, Doc. Couple seconds, was all. He was gone again before I got to the scene." 

"That's not right," House mutters. He's already up, on his way out the door, back to the library, back to any place without assorted authority figures to distract him. It's not right. The interval should be getting longer as the Quaice energy expends itself, and instead, it's getting shorter. And the only reason that would happen is if something in another dimension is ... anchoring Wilson, somehow. A familiar connection, a stray thread he got tangled up in, something like ...

"Me," House says to nobody, while he gimps onward as fast as he can. "That idiot went and found _me_."

* * *

_ In the vortex, part three _

 

"How," demands House, the other House, the _different_ House, "are you not in Minnesota?" and there are so many things wrong with that question Wilson doesn't know where to begin.

"Minne ... sota?" he tries, the word unfamiliar in his mouth.

"Why would you fake a trip to the Mayo Clinic? You're on the program. Your presentation's in, what, an hour?"

 _Presentation?_ Is this a nightmare? It _feels_ like a nightmare, and at any moment, he'll look down and discover he's not wearing any pants. _Mayo Clinic_ he knows, so he's supposed to be in Chippeway for ...

_Wait. Wait. Start at the beginning._

"House," he says, because yes, he can do this. "Where the hell am I?"

House stares at him.

"You're in your office. And about to be in the MRI, checking for brain tumors." He cocks his head, that diviner's look Wilson knows only too well. "What's going on?"

Wilson sits silent for what feels like a very long time, trying to get his brain to catch up with whatever this is. Not for the first time, he wonders if the vortex is sentient and if it's finding amusement in fucking with him. House opens his mouth, more questions on tap that Wilson can't answer, but stops as Wilson holds up his hand.

"Have you ever heard the old saying that you can't ... be in two places at once?"

"Get to the point," House snaps, and yes, _that's_ House.

"It's not true. You have ... telephones, right?"

"You've had a stroke," House decides.

Wilson shakes his head. "I know it sounds crazy. Humor me. Give him -- me, I guess -- a call."

House is clearly unconvinced, until a wave of blue sparks washes over Wilson's face, ruffles his hair, and flows down across his shoulders.

The conversation is brief and, judging by the tones he can hear from House's phone, mostly consists of this other Wilson being deeply annoyed.

When it's over, House drops into the sofa, speechless. Wilson may not know _this_ House, but he _knows House_. It still feels satisfying to have made him shut up.

* * *

Their previous, failed conjuring session keeps replaying in his head. 

_"Is that silk or cotton?" Hadley says. "It's supposed to be cotton."_

_"It's cotton."_

_Hadley jostles closer. "Are you sure? It looks -- "_

_"It's_ cotton."

_"What about the lock of hair? How old is it?"_

_"It's young enough. Will you relax?"_

_"I can't help it. These tokens on the drawing slab, where's our Wilson? This just feels ... wrong."_

And the crux of it was, she was right. In his bones, House already knew. It was wrong, it was all wrong; what they needed would be simpler than that, if he only knew what _it_ was.

Now, though nothing has changed and he has no evidence at all, he _does_ know, with a certainty that means he's either right or crazy. The thing he needs, he already has, tucked away in his computer desk at home.

It occurs to him, while he's lifting the false bottom out of the drawer he keeps locked, that most people -- normal people -- probably do not have secret stashes of items they stole from the ones (okay, _one_ ) that they love. 

There are a few exotic coins from Wilson's travels, one half of a set of cuff links that had made Wilson look like a smarmy Spells for Success™ franchisee, a handful of photos Wilson found embarrassing for various reasons. 

None of those are what House needs. Forget all the detritus in the textbooks, the salt and pieces of plant life and feathers and all that shit they were using before. 

He needs something of Wilson's, something _he_ stole from under Wilson's nose, something _valuable_. 

Something Wilson had treasured.

Wilson's antique watch lies in the very back corner of the drawer, its golden curves glinting softly in the shadows.

* * *

_ In the vortex, part four _

He hasn't eaten much in however long it's been. Days, he thinks, if time means anything when you're bouncing around like a cosmic pinball. Which he has been. 

He hasn't slept much, either. Whatever rest and food he's had, has been on the sofa at this other House's place, where he keeps bouncing back. It's just House's, not House's-and-Wilson's. He only has time for a half a sandwich, a gulp of water, before he's gone again, tumbling through glittering pinwheels that he has to shut his eyes against. 

The other one of him is still in _Minne-sota_. Where it's August. 

It was snowing, in the last place he landed. He doesn't know where it was, but the few quiet voices he heard were not speaking English, and the vast, dark town was in ruins. 

Fortunately, he wasn't there long. Nobody noticed when he came or when he left.

* * *

"The hour approaches," House intones, in grandest fake movie-wizard style he can muster. "Come, minion. Gather the warrants once more. We begin our ascent to the top of Penis Tower!"

Hadley sighs.

"That joke was lame the first fifty times, House."

"Come on," House says. "It's tall, cylindrical? Flared at the top?" He raises an eyebrow. "What am I _supposed_ to call it?"

"It was the Summoning Room last time I checked."

"Boring," House pronounces. " _Bor_ -ing."

"We need more lantern flies for the tree. The first batch mated and died."

"Fine. Go see Spaulding. Little weirdo always has a few in incubation." House reaches into his pocket, reassuring himself that he hasn't lost the one thing he needs more than any warrants.

He still has Wilson's gold watch.

* * *

It's not House's knees that protest when he crouches awkwardly to place the new token in its proper square on the drawing slab. He expects some discomfort; without Wilson's distaff protection, he's had to get his old cane out of storage. Still, the electric jolt of pain in his shoulder takes him by surprise. His hand shakes, and the watch rattles against the cold stone. He hears Hadley's indrawn breath, and speaks the words of Summoning through gritted teeth.

He steps to safety, outside the summoning circle, and they watch while something that might be a snowflake drifts in from the empty north alcove.

It sparks in the candle light, makes a lazy loop, and they trace its path intently as it falls to the floor. No flame leaps up from it, no wisp of smoke, no hint of transformation except in the boring, mundane sense: it melts where it lands. The droplet shines, nothing but water.

"What the hell -- " House begins, and that's when he sees something ... else. 

A figure emerges out of the shadows, lumbering, back bent beneath the weight of a heavy sack. He steps into the light -- royal red blazes forth as the figure stands straight, eases his bag to the floor, and picks up the gold watch House had placed there. The gold gleams one last time before vanishing up the man's sleeve or into some hidden pocket. With one gloved hand, the man pushes back his scarlet cap. Then the red flare dies back, and ...

"That's not Wilson," Hadley whispers, and it's not, not unless Wilson has changed into a fat man in a faded and frayed red and black greatcoat that would have fit right in during Tilden's first administration, a man with a silver beard so thick House half-expects sparrows to fly out of it.

"This is wrong," Hadley says, just as a reindeer steps delicately into the circle, dark eyes gleaming, a wide leather yoke trimmed with evergreen about its neck. The rank smell of wet fur fills the air. "House, this is wrong."

"No," House says, and then again, with more certainty. "No. This is right."

Their visitor removes his cap and scratches his head, and for moment House is sure he sees horns, just a glimpse amid the tangled grey curls.

"House ... " Hadley has taken a step closer, close enough that House can feel her warmth against his shoulder. "That can't be -- " She swallows and tries again. "Who did you summon?"

"On this night, he summoned who he needed," the visitor says, and whatever else House was expecting, it wasn't this quiet, normal voice.

"That would be Wilson," House says. "You don't look like Wilson."

"House ... " Hadley hisses, and House knows he's breaking the first rule of summoning; namely, don't piss off any spirits who might be more powerful than your binding spell. The thing is, he doesn't care.

The reindeer laughs, and okay, House thinks, this may be right, but it's still terribly, terribly wrong.

"Shut up, you dunderhead," the spirit says, and the reindeer dips its head and looks abashed, but not very. "Can we get this over with? I'm on a tight schedule."

"Dunderhead," Hadley ventures. "Is that ... your reindeer's name? Because if it is, then all the stories -- "

"No," the spirit says. He glances down at his bag, back up at House. "Well?" he says.

"You know what I'm here for," House says, and of this he is absolutely certain. "You just picked up his watch." 

"Return what you stole; perhaps you get back what was stolen. Balance."

Solstice -- because that is surely who this is, Solstice himself -- opens the top of his rough-woven sack, takes something out, and places it in House's hand. 

The ageless figure has vanished in a flash of gold before House opens the tiny, red velvet box.

A lanternfly rises out, and vanishes too.

House watches it go, and _nothing_ more has changed, and there isn't and never will be an explanation, and he's not really aware that he's shouting at Solstice to come back and tell him what the _hell_ is going on until Hadley grabs his shoulder and the sharp shock of pain snaps him to attention.

"I heard something -- _someone_ \-- on the catwalk," she says. "Just outside the door."

* * *

Wilson really, _truly_ wishes this vortex of his would figure out how to move him around standing up. Because he's on his ass again, this time in ... in ...

His heart races. It looks like the catwalk to the tower, this time. And it isn't bending and blurring around him; it isn't full of blue sparks; it's just --

 _"Wilson!"_

House, his _own_ House, bursts through the Summoning Room door, limping severely, haggard, the most welcome sight Wilson has ever seen. Another second and House is there, beside him, warm fingers pressing on his throat to check the pulse. 

This time, the blackness he falls into isn't a hole in time and space. He has simply passed out.

* * *

"Is he ... is he ... well, he's breathing." 

"Fainted," House replies. "Looks like dehydration, hunger, sleep deprivation. I'm ordering up the Midnight Special: One coffee for me, and a Lacsol IV for the party boy."

"Got it," Hadley says. "Served on a hot, fresh gurney." 

"That's the one. Go on, I'll stay with him." 

House's leg can't handle any more of this crouching at Wilson's side, so he sits, stretching out, hoping for the wave of pain to ebb out before it turns to nausea. He wanted coffee to wash his next dose of pills down; it would help if he didn't get sick in the process. 

"It's all your fault I'm so pathetic right now," he says, nudging Wilson's shoulder. "What do you have to say for yourself?" 

He doesn't expect an answer and he doesn't get one -- Wilson's eyes dart beneath his closed lids, tracking ... something.

House can't wait to ask him _what_.

* * *

"Glad you're back," House says. "My coffee got cold." He can feel Hadley's eyes rolling from five feet away, but he doesn't care. 

"How bad?"

Of course the first thing Wilson wants to know, now that he's awake and no longer being shunted in and out of the weave of the universe, is that. He's barely rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and he's scowling at the cane with deep suspicion.

"About how it used to be. Nothing I can't handle. You ask me for a numerical scale and I'll ... okay, probably nothing. Need the cane too much to beat you with it."

"Damn vortex. All that and it broke my stitch. Give me a day or two. As soon as I can -- "

"You moron. I'm not risking you having an etheric inversion just so I don't have to take a few pills."

"I want ... I need to do _something_."

"Write it all down," House says. He's already made sure there's a pad and pen on hand, at the bedside. "Before it fades. Especially the stuff about the other one of me."

"I ... wait, when did I tell you I -- "

"Just now. But I already knew. It was the only thing that made sense. You got stuck because you found a compatible energy thread, so your vortex didn't undergo entropic decay when it should have. And let's face it, I'm the most compatible energy thread you've got. So ... tell me how it went."

Wilson heaves a deep sigh and pinches the bridge of his nose: his classic _got a headache now_ routine. House is considering offering one of his pills, but Wilson interrupts that thought.

"Okay." He takes a deep breath. "Okay. To start with," he says, "the other you is also a jackass."

 

~ fin

 

**_Epilogue to come ..._ **


End file.
